A roundabout way of crossing the intersection
8/01/2006 12:00:00 a.m.
EARLIER this year, Wellington City Council installed a new design of roundabout at the corner of Dee Street and The Parade in Island Bay.
Despite the intersection having a low incidence of accidents, it was identified by the council as a high accident risk. The fact that there has recently been an accident at the intersection is not a sign that the roundabout has made the intersection less safe, says the council’s senior road safety engineer Paul Barker.
"The accident could be something simple like driver inattention and it wouldn’t have mattered what was at the intersection," says Barker.
Barker regularly meets with the police to discuss accidents in the city and he hopes to find out more at the next meeting later this week.
"At the moment I haven’t a clue what caused the crash so we don’t know if it’s a one-off incident or the start of something we don’t want to happen there," he says.
The council has been monitoring the intersection since the roundabout was installed and have been working with residents to ensure it is doing the job it was installed to do.
"A lot of residents think it’s too big."
Not all of the feedback has been bad.
"The feeling I get is that most people are happy with it. I tend to hear only the negative comments because people that are happy don’t usually let us know. This time I’m getting a lot of positive comments, which is surprising. People are going out of their way to tell us it’s been an improvement.
"Obviously there are some people not entirely happy and if we can appease them, it’s a win-win situation."
